


They Court Chaos and Call It Pedagogy

by youCANgetaPhDinThis



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Also I have no idea what the plot is doing, Alternate Universe - Professors, Double Drabble, Drabble, Even Tony, Gen, I'm writing for a very niche audience, No beta we die like mne, Pierce is the Department Chair and the power has gone to his head, Steve is the DGS, Triple Drabble...and so on, because he has to be a leader of some sort right?, every chapter will be a drabble of some sort, everyone works in the English Department, except Odin (he's the Dean), if you too are deeply concerned about writing pedagogy: welcome, various other Avengers and sundry, we're ending on the double ohs folks, we're here for a good time not a long time
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27548938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youCANgetaPhDinThis/pseuds/youCANgetaPhDinThis
Summary: The English professors at Midgard University are sick of the way the standard A-F grading scale is causing more harm to their students than helping them develop their writing and critical thinking. With differing views, an apathetic Dean, and a Department Chair who is against them at every turn, can they create an initiative that will help their students, or will the bullshit of the ivory tower prevail?
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so, my username is not a joke. This is a pseud I'm using while working on getting my PhD in how to use pop culture, specifically fandom and fanfic in the composition classroom. I'm writing this fic as final project for one of my classes. That means I'm going to be linking to actual education journals and resources. But I'm also going to be using the same shitty humor and fanon characterizations I'm (not so) famous for on my regular account. And hey, maybe some day, in the distant future, I will be able to link the two accounts and we can all laugh about this together. ~H


	2. Chapter 2

“They court chaos and call it pedagogy.” Department Chair Alexander Pierce glared at the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences through the Zoom call.

Odin sighed and refused to meet his eyes, although whether it was due to emotions or because he preferred to stare at his own face while on a video call, Pierce didn’t know. The old crow was the _most_ inefficient administrator.

“They want to change the entire way we grade students!” Pierce growled.

Odin tilted his head. “Well, your staff is certainly very creative…” Pierce smothered the urge to facepalm through the rambling monologue.


	3. Chapter 3

“What’re you even doing in this department, Stark?” Nat sighed, tilting her chair back. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Engineering?”

“Dual-placement,” Tony and Steve spoke together, but Steve nodded, giving Tony the go ahead. “I fucked around in the 80’s and got a PhD in Sci-Fi Lit and its applications in engineering just to piss Howard off. Someone here figured that out and you assholes needed bodies. Why hire more people when they could just slap another title after my name, double my workload and increase my pay by 10%?”

Nat tilted her head in acquiesce. That sounded right.


	4. Chapter 4

“Now that everyone’s here,” Steve threw a look at Loki and Erik who had both been late, “we can get started.”

“But we are not all here.” T’Challa’s soft interruption had been inquiring and had nothing of the mocking edge that Loki’s follow-up question contained. 

“Yes, oh great DGS, what gives _you_ the power to call this departmental meeting without our _esteemed_ chair, Alexander Pierce, _hmm_?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Nothing. I don’t have any more power than what you all give me. Dr. Pierce is currently in a meeting with Odin, and I wanted to see if we could get some departmental cooperation about the initiative to change the grading systems in first year comp classes—which Dr. Pierce is keenly against.”

“He sure is _keenly_ against it, isn’t he?” Tony couldn’t pass up the opportunity to mock Steve’s dated language.

Steve rolled his eyes. Again. “He’s so entrenched in believing he’s right that he’s hurting our students. I thought you were with me in this Stark.”

“Oh, I am.” Tony smirked and typed something on his iPad. “But if I can’t make fun of you along the way, then I lose all joy from my life Steven.”

“What exactly _is_ the plan here, gentlemen?” Nat asked before Steve and Tony could really start going at it.

“We all know the current method isn’t working. We’ve known that since the 60’s—”

“Steve, I respect the hell outta the work you’re tryna do, but if I hear one more person reference [Diederich, French, and Carlton](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2333-8504.1961.tb00286.x) and their unanalyzed, uncontextualized, shitty-ass study, the results will not be pretty.” Erik, the newest and only department member still without tenure, interrupted.

“He has a point,” Loki drawled, “Just because the idiots came to the right conclusion doesn’t mean their entire process wasn’t flawed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will the Avengers ever get to the point of this meeting? Will there ever be a plot? Will I ever demonstrate any sort of competence at this? I certainly don't know. I guess if you stick around you might find out?????
> 
> Edit: for those wondering, DGS= Director of Graduate Studies, and is the faculty member in charge of the Graduate Program at the university. And while the DGS does have some administrative and other powers and are kind of seen as a "second in command" to the Chair, they typically aren't a "boss" in the department the way the Chair is. Both the Department Chair and DGS are rotating positions within the tenured faculty, but that doesn't mean that the power doesn't go to some people's heads, especially in ego heavy departments. *cougholdstraightwhitemencough*


	5. Chapter 5

Even T’Challa was giving Steve a _look_.

“Hey!” He held his hands up. “It’s not my fault no one in the past 60 years has done a better job.” He fidgeted. “But I’m not about to start glorifying Diederich’s work either. I just want everyone on the same page before we get into the real discussion. We all agree that what’s going on now has to change, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Unfortunately.”

Erik just gave a sharp nod.

Steve’s grin grew. “Pierce isn’t going to know what hit ‘em.”

Tony twirled his stylus and smirked. “[Killjoys](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvdmx0hm) have _all_ the fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm baaaaaack. Still with no plot development though ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ The link in this chapter goes to the jstor archive page for the book _Re/Orienting Writing Studies: Queer Methods, Queer Projects_ that contains the chapter "ASSESSMENT KILLJOYS: Queering the Return for a Writing Studies World-Making Methodology" By: Nicole Caswell and Stephanie West-Puckett. Unless you have free access to jstor through your institution, don't bother using it. I'm sure with enough digging it's hosted for free somewhere; I'm just lazy. Or go to your local library and ask for an inter-library loan of the article. Librarians are MAGIC.
> 
> Bonus points if you know which response belongs to which character there in the middle =)


	6. Chapter 6

“I still haven’t heard anything _approaching_ a plan.” Just because Nat agreed with the idea didn’t mean she could forget the practicalities.

“That’s the next step _Romanov_ ,” Steve met the eyes of everyone around the table. “Pierce will be in meetings for at least another two hours. I want everyone to spend the next 45 minutes devising a strategy for assessing FYC, the beginnings of a defense for accreditation assessment, and a plan for integration with the current overall institutional assessment.”

“All of that in 45 minutes? You expect miracles.” T’Challa protested.

“Well then,” Steve stood, “we better get started.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYC=first year composition


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow this chapter became Nat and Loki bonding? I don't know how that happened, and I don't even love where it stopped, but I hit 300 words at the perfect moment and didn't even have to fiddle with it, so I'm stopping it for now. (But I'm coming back to this scene, because Loki is having emotions?? He wasn't even supposed to be here originally- but then I realized I needed _at least_ one more person to make it an even semi-convincing sized English Department with full time faculty. And in no universe could I convince myself that Clint had an English PhD. Math? Sure. Dude does advanced calc on the fly all the time even if he doesn't realize it. But English? My dumpster fire gremlin child does not have the patience for that. So Loki it was.)

Nat looked up from her computer to see Loki leaning against the doorframe in her office. “Shouldn’t you be working on your assessment plan?”

“I could say the same to you, unless that’s not Galaga you just hid when you realized I was watching.”

Nat very deliberately smirked.

Loki pushed off the doorframe and came further into the office, sitting in one of the chairs in front of her desk. “I’m _shocked_ Romanov. I thought you were just as _gung-ho_ as Rogers and Stark about changing the system.”

Nat leaned back in her chair and stretched. “I am absolutely in support of changing the system.” She settled back into her seat and pinned Loki with a look. “But I know when to pick my battles. Everyone is going to come into that meeting with the belief that their way is the only way to do it.”

 _Which you know._ She didn’t say, but he heard from her expression alone.

He acknowledged the point with a small nod.

“I’ve done my research. There’s no perfect solution. As irritating as you all are, you idiots are actually good at your jobs. My plan will come after I’ve heard everyone else’s plan.”

“Because they’re going to be so compatible?’’

She shrugged. “No. We’re never compatible. But that’s why we work.” This time her smile was genuine, “Even when you and Erik are causing trouble simply because you can.”

“I take offense to that.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.”

Nat turned back to her game. “What about you маленькая змея where’s your plan?”

“What makes you think I don’t have one?”

“If you were going to present a plan that had a chance of going before your father, you’d be working on it until the last second.”

“Ouch.”

“Am I wrong?”

“…Not entirely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> маленькая змея = little snake (please excuse the awful translation. I know google translate is not my friend. If you happen to know the correct translation, I would be delighted if you were to inform me!)


	8. Chapter 8

Nat just let the silence sit, waiting for Loki to decide if he was going to talk.

“I only attend these meetings to see how much chaos I can cause. Now that Stark’s here, the possibilities for mayhem have increased tenfold.”

She continued to play her game, waiting for the real answer.

When there was only five minutes until Steve was expecting them, he spoke, “Anything we put in front of my father in my name will be rejected out of hand. It’s better if he believes I am merely a bystander, brought along by vague departmental loyalty than any real investment in this plan.”

“And are you invested?”

“Of course. Only an imbecile of the highest order would be against it.”

“So, you think Pierce is an imbecile?”

“Him and every administrator that worships at the altar of one-size-fits-all education. Higher ed should be about the student and the knowledge, not about the paychecks of egotistical administrators who haven’t been in a classroom in twenty years.”

“He doesn’t hate you, you know.”

“Who, Pierce?”

“No. Odin.”

Loki raised one eyebrow.

“Just because he’s awful doesn’t mean he isn’t proud.” She saved her game and stood. “C’mon, it’s time.”

“ _Joy_.”


	9. Chapter 9

“So, what have you got?” Steve clapped his hands now that all six of them had reconvened in the cramped seminar room that ostensibly the English Department’s.

“I will go first, if no one objects?” T’Challa paused, but quickly continued, “I have done much reading on this subject, and I believe that labor-based grading contracts, combined with a Pass/Fail classification will be the best way to move forward. I have compiled a plan that addresses the valuing labor over result and, I believe, using [Inoue’s](https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/labor/) work, I will be able to convince both the university and the accreditation board that this method is better for all students but especially students of color.”

“You really think the accreditation board is going to let all FYC classes be Pass/Fail?” Tony looked incredulous.

“I thought we were changing the game here, Stark. Is that not your goal?” T’Challa grimaced as he shifted to face Tony.

“I am all about changing the game. But we have to be realistic. You can’t go about making sweeping changes if you don’t have the capital or leverage to back it up. We don’t have the kind of power necessary for a Pass/Fail change. _Yet_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was writing this and I realized that the one thing I never researched was whether or not P/F FYC courses were something that would mess with accreditation. To people who actually know the answer to that question: 1. please tell me in the comments 2. if it doesn't, I'm claiming creative license for the fic, and if you want to yell at me about using it as a point of tension, there's a lovely back button in the top corner of your screen you can use instead. *jazzhands*


	10. Chapter 10

“Then what do you suggest?” Nat cut in before T’Challa, who looked as calm as ever, or Erik, who was flickering with indignation, could reply.

“Rubrics.”

It seemed like the entire room did a double take at that word.

“Hold up.” Erik’s indignation fell into outright rage. “You, Mr. Man-of-the-Future, are shooting down actual progressive ideas for a barely functional relic, that so many people can’t even use right? Man, you know those things caused half our problems? How dare you even say such a thing?” It was obvious the hand T’Challa had laid on his cousin’s forearm was the only thing keeping Erik in his seat.

Tony just raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Can I speak now?”

T’Challa tightened his grip before Erik could say anything. “Please, do.”

Tony took off his glasses and tucked them into the open vee of his shirt. “You’re right. Traditional rubrics can go suck my dick. What I’m proposing is a Single Point Rubric. Three columns: Above Standard, Standard, and Below Standard. The only column you fill in is Standard. Above and Below are left blank. Standard is solid A- to B+ territory. Anything a student does that goes beyond what you expect of them, you fill in in the blank space in the rubric. Same with where they make any missteps.

“You can fill in whatever criteria you want for the cross rows, and we can have workshops for how to make good At Standard, well, standards. This removes a lot of the restrictions and limitations put in place by traditional rubrics but still provides structure for those students who need it.”

Tony leaned back in his chair, very obviously basking in the slightly stunned looks on everyone’s faces. “You really should do some more reading on this. [Jenna Wilson](http://journalofwritingassessment.org/article.php?article=126) has a great article on it.”

“What about assignments that aren’t intensive enough to require a rubric?” It was the unflappable Natasha Romanov who asked the question.

Tony shrugged. “Low-stakes assignments. If they do it—and follow the directions—they get the credit.”

“But with that sort of system, nearly every student will receive an A.” It was hard to tell if Loki’s outrage was genuine.

Again, Tony shrugged. “Aren’t we here to buck the whole system? What does it matter if we game it? Besides, I read [Inoue](https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2019.0216.0) too.” He flicked a quick glance at T’Challa, “I bet we could get away with reclassing the low-stakes work as labor-based grading.”

The entire room seemed to balance on a precipice as everyone realized what had just happened.

“Tony,” Nat drew out his name and then paused, as if she didn’t quite want to step on the landmine she knew was in front of her, “did you just suggest combining your proposal and T’Challa’s?”

Tony’s hand twitched. “Well, I was trying to be a bit more subtle about it, but yeah.”

“Who would have thought.” Loki brushed imaginary crumbs off the table. “A man such as yourself. A team player.”

Tony clenched his jaw.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say this chapter was frustrating? Between Tony deciding he needed to speak before Steve, and then deciding that HE was going to be the team player before Nat could even bring it up, I've had to restructure this entire argument. And not to mention the way freaking adjectives and hyphens and compound words all work in this Godforsaken language cause me to play with the word count for like 20 minutes longer than any sane human should really bother. *sigh* Here's to hoping you enjoyed it! Maybe? please?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments and Kudos are a delight, but please not concrit. Like I said, I'm working on my PhD- that's criticism enough, ya feel? I do now have a [tumblr](https://youcangetaphdinthis.tumblr.com/) under this pseud if you ever want to yell about fictional characters or opinions on writing pedagogy. There's not much there, but it exists???? Cheers!


End file.
